Swiss Army knife vs. individual (better) items (Opinel No. 3, 2-inch Westcott scissors, titanium tweezers, nail file)
SAKs are a popular item, but given that Swiss Army knives are not allowed in carry-on I was interested in alternatives.
What do you use?
You saved 2g for about 50cm3 more. Congrats.
And a bag/case
I love a good Opinel knife, but isn’t the point of the Swiss Army knife that it saves space?
the real question is what do you need a pocket knife for on an ultralight-style hike when you have a pair of titanium scissors?
The creator of the Swiss Army knife wasn’t trying to solve a weight problem
What about the toothpick?
mini chainsaw does the job in this case. You can use it as tweezers, nail clipper, heck one can even shave or haircut
You’ll never have to shave again after using a chainsaw!
Wait, what? The SAK classic is only 19 grams? How is it reading 21? Did you not zero it out for the tissue?
Besides, I personally would rather carry a multitool on my belt than either of these options, even in the spirit of this sub. It may weigh a lot more than both options but what you can do with one is leaps and bounds over what either of these kits can do. Especially with so many multitools on the market with a lot of brands allowing you to kit yours out how you like or pick different versions with different tools, you’d be able to eliminate other tools in your kit as well.
This is also one of those situations where the saying “I’d rather have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.” comes into play for me.
you may want a better pair of tweezers if that is something you use a lot. those penknife tweezers are ok but still rather flimsy.
I’ve found mini scissors to be acceptable nail clippers, so I’ve never needed to carry any on longer trips.
Don’t bring logic into this
You could also remove the plastic cases from the Swiss Army Knife and save the same amount of weight while not taking up more space
You’d lose the ‘tweezers’ and ‘toothpick’, though I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
